Quiet is the word that comes to mind to describe the writing of Harvard s first female president on the uncommon subject of death. A quiet regard for Quiet is the word that comes to mind to describe the writing of Harvard s first female president on the uncommon subject of death. A quiet regard for the over 600,000 men who perished directly due to the unbelievable carnage of the American Civil War.[return][return]There are thousands upon thousands of books written about that war. I have nearly 100 on my shelves. Some are general histories of the conflict, many are written about specific battles such as Gettysburg and Antietam. All every single book talk about the staggering number of casualties. The numbers are not new to me.[return][return]But none of these books actually looks at what those deaths meant in terms of the fabric of American society at that time. That is Faust s unique achievement. She writes about it with profound scholarship, with insight and that quiet regard.[return][return]Her chapter headings are evocative. [return] Dying; To Lay Down My Life recounts the numbers as well as the concept of the Good Death, prevalent throughout American society. [return] Killing: The Harder Courage looks at what it meant, in a deeply religious society, to actually take the life of another human being by what were, in the end, millions of volunteers, not professional soldiers. [return] Burying: New Lessons Caring for the Dead talks about the sheer logistical effort of burying thousands of dead on both sides after a major battle. [return] Naming: The Significant Word UNKNOWN --the agony of those who were left behind in trying to find out what had happened to their husbands, brothers, sons, friends and the efforts made by private organizations as well as those relatives to find and identify the dead. [return] Realizing: Civilians and the Work of Mourning describes the stunned aura of denial and the terrible pain of loss. [return] Believing and Doubting: What Means This Carnage was the struggle to understand and maintain belief in a Divine Providence that could allow such mass slaughter. [return] Accounting; Our Obligations to the Dead talks about the massive Federal effort that went into establishing national cemeteries, locating the graves of Union soldiers and re-interring them into those cemeteries. Gettysburg was among the first and is the most famous but is only one of about 20 established to protect the dead from anonymity and the depredations of resentful and vengeful Southerners. [return] Numbering: How Many? How Many? examines the American obsession with statistics and the difficulty of establishing accurate casualty counts. And finally, [return] Epilogue: Surviving says it all for that chapter.[return][return]This is a slow-reading book, packed full of information, but more importantly, an assessment of the attitudes and jarring changes forced on American society in the wake of the mass murder in the War of the Rebellion. An interesting sidelight: in the last chapters, Faust touches on the sullenness and vengefulness of Southerners as they took out these sentiments on the Union dead. They weren t all Lees.[return][return]It has been said by Shelby Foote and others that there were two countries: the US before the Civil War and the US after it. That is meant in a political sense. But as Faust shows in this magnificent work, that was true socially as well, as the surviving population tried to come to terms with just what all those deaths meant.[return][return]To make her point, she quotes liberally from newspapers, diaries, official records and the works of people like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr who was a Union officer, Ambrose Bierce who also served in the Union Army, Emily Dickinson and others who wrote so poignantly about the suffering.[return][return]Shelby Foote repeatedly said that to understand the US as it is today, you must understand the Civil War. Faust, from the somber viewpoint of the unimaginable numbers of dead, shows how the war shattered whole sections of the fabric of American society and the efforts made by ordinary citizens, the survivors, to try to make some meaning of that destruction. The results of their efforts were instrumental in shaping the US into the nation that it is today.[return][return]I cannot recommend this book highly enough....more

Plenty Of Blame To Go Around[return]Eric J. Wittenberg and J. David Petruzzi[return][return]Many historians and much popular historical fiction blamePlenty Of Blame To Go Around[return]Eric J. Wittenberg and J. David Petruzzi[return][return]Many historians and much popular historical fiction blame Lee s defeat at Gettysburg on Jeb Stuart s absence, gone on a raid around the rear of the Army of the Potomac, leaving Lee without vital intelligence of the whereabouts of the Union forces until the battle was inadvertently started on July 1. The raid has been condemned as a joy ride, an attempt on Stuart s part to refurbish his image after being caught by surprise at Brandy Station on June 9 and defeated at Upperville a short time later. Stuart was condemned in the Confederate army for his absence, starting on July 2, when Colonel Charles Taylor, Lee s military secretary, was furious enough to want him shot. Stuart had his defenders; the controversy that started while the battle was still going on has continued to the present day.[return][return]Wittenberg and Petruzzi have very carefully and thoroughly researched Stuart s ride, unearthing heretofore unknown sources (including one that caused the publisher, Savas Beatie, to literally stop the presses so that it could be incorporated into the book) to present a very well written, very thorough, very balanced examination of, not only Stuart s ride, but also of Lee s and Longstreet s orders, which are at the heart of the controversy. The question really boiled down to: did Stuart obey his orders or did he gake unwarranted liberties with the discretion given him, ignore the good of the Army and set out on a joy ride to bolster a bruised vanity?[return][return]The book is extremely well written. It covers the skirmishes and two major battles, at Hanover and Hunterstown, that Stuart s cavalry fought. It follows Stuart s ride with enormous attention to fascinating detail, not just of the tactics involved but also of the very real, usually ignored problems of maintaining both men and horses in the field. I m not a horse person, so I have only a vague idea of what is involved in maintaining the animals. The authors do a great service in pointing out just what was involved. Given the problems, the controversial capture and retention of the Union wagon train takes on a different light.[return][return]One of the chapters that was extremely interesting to me personally was that describing Stuart s shelling of the Army barracks at Carlisle, PA, since I received my undergraduate degree at Dickinson College. The chapter is no better than others, but I enjoyed it more for obvious reasons. That said, it s a dramatic story that I wish I had known at the time I was a student! [return][return]The last chapters are devoted to a thorough discussion of the controversy, with liberal quotations from both sides in the Confederate army and extensive discussions from historians, both those immediately after the Civil War and modern ones. The conclusion: as the title indicates, there is plenty of blame to go around. Yes, Stuart holds responsibility for making several tactical errors, but Lee--whom no one wanted to criticize for the Confederate defeat --does as well, as does Jubal Early, Beverley Robertson (a cavalry commander in Stuart s division) and Marshall himself. In retrospect, this seems logical; it s a rare occurrence when a single action is the only cause of a major event as complicated as was the Battle of Gettysburg.[return][return]The book is blessed with not only adequate but downright lovely maps, clearly showing routes and troop dispositions. There is one particularly fine map showing Stuart s routes: the one he did take, the one he was supposed to take, and the suggested alternative, which accompanies text clearly examining the pros and cons of each one.[return][return]There are four Appendices: Appendix A gives the roster of Stuart s command; Appendix B gives the Orders of Battle for the engagements Stuart fought; Appendix C gives the complete text of Stuart s official report; and Appendix D is a Driving Tour of Stuart s ride to Gettysburg.[return][return]A word about the last-named Appendix: it seems to be de rigueur these days to include walking/driving tours in books on Civil War battles. This one seems particularly well-done, with extensive directions and plenty of photographs to go along with the text. How valuable it is in enhancing the knowledge or appreciation of Stuart s ride is impossible to tell without having done it. Still, it s there for those with the interest in doing so.[return][return]This is a very fine addition to the literature on the Battle of Gettysburg. Highly recommended....more

There are several fine books out about the Battle of Gettysburg, most notable being Edwin Coddington’s superb one volume work, The Gettysburg CampaignThere are several fine books out about the Battle of Gettysburg, most notable being Edwin Coddington’s superb one volume work, The Gettysburg Campaign and Harry Pfanz’s exhaustive 3 volume study. But like just about every book on the Civil War, the maps are barely adequate. The maps in Coddington’s book are good but there is just one single map showing the movements of both armies from June 3rd, when Lee began pulling out from Fredericksburg to June 30th, when both armies began concentrating in the Gettysburg area. To say that following the movements of the armies is tedious is understating the case. But graphics are expensive to reproduce in a book, and require a different type of attention to detail. It is no wonder that so many books fall short.

Books of maps--atlases--exist, but usually these are just one-page affairs of a particular battle with a very brief summary of the battle itself. Ghettysburg was the most complex battle of the Civil War, and one-page maps do not even begin to cover the numerous individual engagements which together made up the three days of fighting.

In The Maps of Gettysburg, Gottfried pioneered a new format. He broke down the entire campaign--from the start on June 3rd to the end of Lee’s retreat on July 14--into sections. Each section--sometimes covering one or more days’ of marching, sometimes just a few hours of fighting--has two pages; the left-hand page is text summarizing the action portrayed on the right hand page, which is a map,

The format works beautifully. The text is by necessity a stripped-down, concise summary of events, but that’s no problem; Gottfried is a fine writer. Gottfried has done a wonderful job with both maps and text. There are errors, but they are pretty obvious in most cases, and should not detract from the overall enjoyment of this very fine work. I for one found that for the first time, I understood the movements of both armies from Virginia to Gettysburg.

In addition, there is information on some aspects of the campaign that receive very little attention in works about the battle, such as the short but decisive engagement of Second Winchester on June 10-12 and the cavalry fights that occurred on July 3rd. Lee’s retreat to Virginia is well covered.

Harry Pfanz spent 10 years as a historian at the Gettysburg National Military Park. After retiring as Chief Historian of the National Park Service inHarry Pfanz spent 10 years as a historian at the Gettysburg National Military Park. After retiring as Chief Historian of the National Park Service in 1981, he began publishing in 1987 what would be a 3-volume series on the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863. The first book covered the events of the second day; it was followed by a book in 1993 on the fighting on Culp s and Cemetery Hills over July 2nd and 3rd. . Although chronologically the first book in the series, Gettysburg: The First Day was the last published, in 2001. [return][return]Pfanz gets the two armies to the Potomac in a brief but perfectly adequate Introduction. While the first chapter concerns itself with Ewell s raid into Pennsylvania, it s an excellent setting for the complicated massing of both armies. From this beginning, it is an exhaustive look at the events immediately leading up to the engagement and the fighting that occurred west of Gettysburg and in the town itself after the Union s defeat on McPherson s Ridge and Oak Hill. Pfanz describes troop movements not only at the division and regimental level but also down to the company level, where possible. The last chapter is a thoughtful look at Ewell s highly criticized decision not to press an attack at Cemetery Hill after the main fighting was over. The Epilogue is mostly a series of mini-essays on the post-Gettysburg careers of the most prominent commanders on both sides.[return][return]There are four Appendices; the most important is the Order of Battle for both Armies on the first day. I found this invaluable for keeping track of the often-confusing numbers of names, not only of Corps and division, but of brigade commanders as well, many of whom were critical to the leadership of the fighting. To make it more convenient to use, I scanned and printed out the Order of Battle, keeping it handy to leaf through as I read the book.[return][return]Included within the main body of the book, where appropriate, are mini-biographies of important commanders, both well-known ones such as Buford, Meade, Reynolds, A.P. Hill, Jubal Early, and Robert Rodes, but lesser luminaries as well: Jenkins, Doubleday, Archer, among many others. They are well written and bring a nice light to their actions on the field. [return][return]Especially striking in this respect is the entire chapter on Major General Oliver Howard and the history of the Eleventh Corps under his command. One of Pfanz s aims in writing the book was to examine carefully some of the myths of Gettysburg including that of the cowardice of the Eleventh Corps. This chapter lays an excellent background for the analysis of the fight north of Gettysburg in which the greatly outnumbered and poorly-positioned Eleventh Corps divisions which finally broke under the weight of Ewell s Corps attack. Pfanz credits Howard early on in the book with the foresight to keep most of von Steinwehr s Division back to hold Cemetery Hill in case of a union retreat. That foresight was well justified at the end of the first day s fighting.[return][return]Also included as both personal commentary on the fighting and corroboration (or lack of it) to official accounts are many quotes from the memoirs, letters and recollections of individual officers and men of both armies. While these give a really nice perspective to the battle, they can tend to get in the way, interrupting the narrative so as to make it harder to pick up the thread of the progress of the fighting.[return][return]The most serious fault in this book is the lack of adequate maps. On the credit side, the first two maps of the general area around Gettysburg are excellent in order to place, in the overall picture, the more detailed maps of segments of the different engagements. However, there are too few maps connecting the ones that are included. The maps of the fighting north of Gettysburg are particularly inadequate; for example, given the important role that von Amsberg s division played, it almost doesn t appear on any map of that sector. In addition, many of the later maps are not oriented north/south but east/west, making it difficult to see how the different battle sectors interacted. Finally, the bars used to designate regiments are only numbered and do not give the state designations, creating a great deal of unnecessary work trying to identify exactly which regiments were doing what where. Without a photographic memory, it is impossible to keep track easily.[return][return]To supplement the maps in the book, I referred constantly to the relevant maps in The Maps of Gettysburg by Bradley Gottfried. Without this reference, I would have had a much harder time and have gotten much less out of Pfanz s detailed accounts. Details are pretty useless unless you can make some sense out of them.[return][return]Overall, the book is well worth reading for its various merits described above. But a little extra work on the part of the author and editors could have made the book much more valuable than it is in its present form....more

In this third book of his trilogy on the Battle of Gettysburg, Pfanz focuses on a very little-recognized aspect of the engagement--the fight for CulpIn this third book of his trilogy on the Battle of Gettysburg, Pfanz focuses on a very little-recognized aspect of the engagement--the fight for Culp s Hill and Cemetery Hill on the northern part of the battlefield July 2-3. Thanks to Killer Angels and the movie Gettysburg , Longstreet, Chamberlain, Pickett and others who participated in the fighting for the south and center part of the Union line are practically household names and rightly so. But hardly anyone recognizes the names of Oliver Howard and Richard Ewell as a result.[return][return]Yet there was quite a vicious fight on both days for control of what was, really, the keystone to the Union line--Cemetery Hill and its immediate neighbor on the ridge, Culp s Hill. Confederate losses in particular were extremely heavy as General Johnson ordered his units to attack what were impregnable breastworks on Cemetery Hill. The Confederates occupied a portion of Culp s Hill for a while but were eventually driven off.[return][return]If that were all the book covered--the fighting on those two days--it would be interesting enough. But from the beginning Pfanz makes the account a page-turner, by focusing on the two commanders involved--Confederate Richard Ewell and Union Oliver Howard, and by recapping the fighting on July 1st that affected the Union positions on the two critical hills. He also answers a question that has been raised many times--why did Ewell, on July 1, not occupy Cemetery Hill immediately?[return][return]For those who read the book or saw the movie, which very dramatically depicted the conversation, there is a scene between Isaac Trimble and Robert Lee, where Trimble rants on about Ewell s failure to take the hill. He makes it clear that Ewelll was paralyzed or something and didn t act when he should have. It is particularly well-acted in the movie, and we are left in no doubt that Ewell was the cause of the Confederate failure to follow up their victory of July 1.[return][return]Pfanz discusses the reorganization of Lee s army just prior to the Gettysburg campaign and shows that Ewell--who was taking over Stonewall Jackson s old 2nd Corps--had never served directly under Lee before, but only under Jackson, who was a very, very different commander. One problem, then, was that given the loosey-goosey way Lee gave orders--very different from Jackson who gave precise orders and had the habit of putting under arrest anyone who didn t follow them the way he thought they should have-- Ewell really wasn t sure what he was supposed to do. Also, Ewell himself had reconnoitered Cemetery Hill--and knew that the Union had already occupied it; the Iron Brigade was there. Granted, there weren t a great many troops there, but what no one talks about is the nature of that particular point on the Union defense line--the steep slope, rocks and wooded nature of the hill that made an attack, especially at nightfall, practically impossible given defenders. It gives the lie to Porter Alexander who was critical of Lee s decision, on July 2, of attacking Cemetery Ridge and not the Hill. Alexander, who had a limitless supply of self-confidence if not downright arrogance, admitted that he had not seen the area of Cemetery Hill, but still felt omniscient enough to criticize Lee--who had seen it. One always has to be careful with memoirs, especially those of the losers. Trimble, for example, was an ambitious trouble-maker who was quite self-serving in his accounts after the war of what happened at Gettysburg.[return][return]I found this the most readable, the most followable of Pfanz s three books, if for no other reason than the maps were excellent! Which can not be said of the other two. Also, the extensive notes to each chapter were well worth reading. As usual, Pfanz includes excerpts from letters, diaries and memoirs of everyone from the lowliest private in either army to the highest-ranking generals. This not only makes the book more interesting from a personal perspective (and also shows how no two soldiers saw the fighting the same way) but also provides a bibliography for further reading in terms of these personal reminiscences.[return][return]While this book can be read on its own, it s still better to read the other two (Gettysburg, the First Day and Gettysburg, the Second Day with a good set of maps, such as Gottlieb s The Maps of Gettysburg at hand. The first two books are worth the extra effort, and will make the third that much more of a pleasure to read.[return][return]Highly recommended....more

Gettysburg, The Second Day[return]Harry W. Pfanz[return][return]The second day of the Battle of Gettysburg was a series of engagements that, while conGettysburg, The Second Day[return]Harry W. Pfanz[return][return]The second day of the Battle of Gettysburg was a series of engagements that, while connected, still wound up being more or less separate mini-battles, so that we can talk about the action at Devil s Den, the fight for the Peach Orchard, and so on. Pfanz, in his detailed study of the battle, has written two books; one covering the southern half of that day s battle from the Union center at Cemetery Ridge to the Round Tops and the other the northern half involving Culp s Hill and Cemetery Hill. This book is concerned with the southern half.[return][return]Pfanz starts off this book as he does the other two with a recapitulation of the beginning of the campaign, from June 3, when Lee started pulling out his armies from Fredericksburg and sending them up into Maryland and Pennsylvania. In each book, he's done it from a different perspective; in this one, he starts out with Stanton s order relieving Hooker of command of the Army of the Potomac, replacing him with Meade. The first chapter very briefly describes the march of both armies. The second then gives a succinct summary of the first day s fighting from the Confederate point of view. It finishes with a discussion of the arguments made for and against the attack on July 2. The third does the same for the Union army s concentration at Gettysburg and the reaction of Meade and his generals to the Union defeat that sent the troops racing back to Cemetery Ridge and Hill.[return][return]It s with the 3rd chapter that Pfanz starts his account of the battle on July 2nd. For the next 100 pages, Pfanz goes into excruciating detail about the movements of the troops, including the critical shift by Sickles of the Union 3rd Corps to an advanced line incorporating Devils Den, the Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard, and Longstreet s equally critical decision to countermarch his corps in order to keep out of sight of the Union Signal company stationed on Little Round Top. As more of Meade s army reached Gettysburg, he and his Corps commanders were busy shifting units around, especially after Sickles disastrous decision to ignore Meade s orders and create the salient in front of Cemetery Ridge. Pfanz goes into excruciating detail--with not one single map! It was infuriating to read without that assistance; I wound up using, as I did with his first book on the July 1 battle, Maps of Gettysburg by Gottlieb. While the two authors take somewhat different approaches to the battle and therefore those maps were not completely adequate, still they served to give me a good idea of all the troop movements in the morning and early afternoon of July . Without them, all that painstaking detail would have been lost on me, since I have no other resource.[return][return]But starting with the chapter on the actual opening of the battle, there are very fine maps to go along with a riveting description of the action. And riveting it is. Longstreet struck with all the power of which he was justly famous at a Union line that was badly extended and inadequately defended on Sickles flanks and also at a Union army that was not yet fully assembled. One of the reason for the horrendous casualties on the Union side was that units were thrown in piecemeal, as they became available, to plug gaps in the line. That sort of tactic is usually disastrous; in the case of Gettysburg, while it added to the Union casualties, it was all the defense that Meade and his corps commanders had. And in the end, it was enough; the day was a Union victory with the end of the fighting seeing the Federals concentrated, finally, and in a stronger position than they were at the beginning of the fighting; with no portion of the critical Cemetery Ridge/Round Top line having been lost, thanks to heroic defenses. The Confederates, on the other hand, had gained little.[return][return]As a sidelight, it s interesting to compare Pfanz s account with that of E. Porter Alexander, Longstreet s Chief of Artillery at Gettysburg, who wrote extensively about Gettysburg. In his memoirs, Fighting for the Confederacy, Alexander makes that second day s fighting as a victory for the Confederacy, sneering at the performance of Union soldiers and units and lauding the Confederates as practically supermen. While it is most certainly true that the Confederates fought like demons, the fact is that the Union soldiers did extremely well under adverse conditions, trying to hold lines (Sickles ghastly error) that were basically indefensible. 9,000 Union casualties as compared to 6,000 Confederate ones do not describe an army of cowards.[return][return]Pfanz s research is painstaking and he knows the battlefield well, since, in his career as a historian for the National Park Service, he spent 10 years at Gettysburg. His writing is very good. The pity of it is that the first third of the book is marred by a complete lack of maps; otherwise, it is a superior account, with excerpts from letters, memoirs, and other personal accounts of soldiers on both sides, from the highest officers to the lowest privates, of the battle. If you can lay your hands on apporpriate maps, I would recommend this book unreservedly. Even then, if you can stand not knowing what Pfanz is talking about for about 100 pages out of this 600 page book, then read it anyway....more

Winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Killer Angels is a remarkable work. Within the pages of one book, it manages to recount an excellent hiWinner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Killer Angels is a remarkable work. Within the pages of one book, it manages to recount an excellent history of the Battle of Gettysburg with fictional 'insights' into the minds, thoughts, and actions of several of the major players on both sides.[return][return]To deal with the historical aspect: Shaara's account is mostly accurate; those inaccuracies present are unintentional and minor. One inaccuracy that probably has become fixed in the public mind as history is the charge of the 20th Maine down the slopes of Little Round Top, routing the Alabamans and Texans of the last Confederate assault and taking over 400 prisoners. Until Shaara, very little attention was given to Chamberlain and the 20th Maine--just as a part of the desperate struggle for Little Round Top, while acknowledging the incredible bayonet charge that ended the fighting for the left flank of the Union army. In his superb 3 volume narrative history of the Civil War, in the outstanding chapter on Gettysburg (published in 1963), Shelby Foote gives one paragraph to Chamberlain and the 20th Maine, and equal or slightly more space to his counterpart, Col. William Oates of the 15th Alabama. Chamberlain was highly articulate and wrote extensively after the war. From his writings, it is clear that in actuality, Chamberlain was probably the happiest and most "alive" in his life when he was in the thick of fighting. He wrote quite a bit about Little Round Top; as the years went by, his story changed. No one surviving the war from the 20th Maine, including then-Captain Spears, recalls Chamberlain ordering the right wheel charge or, for that matter, ordering the charge, period. Chamberlain had ordered the men to fix their bayonets, after which the charge just more or less happened. Chamberlain was not the first to remember things differently as time went by nor would he be the last. However, the excellent movie made from the book has as one of its high points the battle for Little Round Top, and the charge of the 20th Maine as described in the book, not as it really happened, was portrayed brilliantly. It really doesn't matter; the 20th Maine deserved all the glory it received and Chamberlain, who received the Medal of Honor (30 years later!) for his part in the defense of Little Round Top deserved the recognition.[return][return]But except for this and a few other details, the history is excellent. Even the maps are among the best I've seen for the summaries of the positions of the armies during the fighting.[return][return]So much for the history. What about the characterizations, particularly of Lee, Longstreet and Chamberlain?[return][return]Clearly, Shaara depended heavily on the writings of the participants themselves for material for his fictional account of their thoughts and feelings. Lee is a problem; he never wrote anything after the war in terms of memoirs. There are letters, and there are the memories of those who fought under him, and that's it. [return][return]Longstreet wrote his memoirs and wrote other articles as well. As part of the losing team, Longstreet wasn't entirely objective about his role, particularly at Gettysburg; there were plenty of high-ranking Confederate officers who, after the war, accused Longstreet of losing the battle. Longstreet did not help his own cause by joining the Republican Party after the war (Grant was a personal friend), and much, much worse, criticizing Lee. Longsteet's reputation fell into disrepute; Shaara's novel helped resurrect Longstreet into repectablity.[return][return]As mentioned above, Chamberlain wrote extensively and articulately. It does appear that Gettysburg in many respects was the emotional high point of his life. He attended every single reunion until the year of his death.[return][return]As for the supporting cast, Buford is problematical. A taciturn man, he wrote little. His most recent biographer admitted the difficulty in putting together such a work since Buford left almost no letters; everything has to be based on memories of friends and colleagues. The same is true for Armistead.[return][return]Given those restraints, Shaara did an incredible job of "narrating" from the different points of view of, in particular, Lee, Longstreet,and Chamberlain. No one knows what truly goes on in the minds and hearts of another person. Few people are so honest even in their letters and conversations, except under unusual circumstances, to let others into those particular recesses. Thus, whatever is written from a 'point of view' has to be nearly sheer speculation. This is particularly true of such public persons such as Lee, Longstreet, and Chamberlain. Lee wrapped himself in his reserve and retreated into being a Marble Man of history. Longstreet had axes to grind, and Chamberlain clearly was wistful about the war.[return][return]Thus Shaara's is a remarkable achievement in making these figures of over 100 years ago come alive and in a thoroughly believable way. You feel Lee's fatigue, his profound belief in God--you're with him as he decides how to handle his subordinates, particularly Stuart-- as he makes the decision for what will be known in history as Pickett's Charge. You're right there with Dutch Longstreet, one of the two modern generals in that war (the other was Sherman) as he agonizes over being asked to throw away his men in impossible attacks when winning alternatives were available. You fight right along with Chamberlain as he assesses his position, thinks about his orders to defend to the last (a question of rhetoric--last man? last bullet? last Reb?), feel his horror when he realizes he has used his younger brother Tom to "plug" a hole in the 20th Maine lines on Little Round Top. These people are no longer just names in a history book but living human beings participating in the bloodiest struggle in American history.[return][return]Shaara takes both these aspects--the historical and the personal--and weaves them into a story that is written vividly in a totally compelling manner and that never stops, never even pauses, but keeps on driving to the bitter climax of Pickett's Charge and the brief aftermath. [return][return]As a result, he has made the Civil War, once just the province of buffs and re-enactors, easily accessible to everyone. All history should be as well presented as this novel presents the Batttle of Gettysburg, a crucial turning point in the climactic power struggle between North and South known as the Civil War....more

This is an excellent book that in my opinion ranks right up there with Shelby Foote's 3 volume history of the Civil War.[return][return]Coddington opeThis is an excellent book that in my opinion ranks right up there with Shelby Foote's 3 volume history of the Civil War.[return][return]Coddington opens with an assessment of the reasons for Lee's PA campaign. He stresses more than others the military situation in the West, specifically Vicksburg. By April, 1863 Grant's armies were on the eastern side of the Mississippi and in May he was laying siege to Vicksburg. Because so much attention and romanticism has been attached to the fighting in the East, too little appreciation is given to the danger the fall of Vicksburg posed for the South. Stretched too thin to send any help, one of Lee's aims was to so frighten the Lincoln government that it would withdraw forces from the Vicksburg campaign to defend Washington.[return][return]Coddington's style of writing is dynamic and immediately interesting. Of all the books I've read so far on the Civil War, Coddington seems to have made the most extensive use of original sources. His research was truly impressive. In order to make a reasoned speculation about different accounts of the movements of one Union unit, Coddington and a friend (Gettysburg resident) drove and personally explored the area to see if connecting roads actually existed that would help clarify the issue. They do and their existence adds weight to his views on the controversy.[return][return]Political consderations on both sides are extensively assessed.[return][return]Since the book is a study of the Gettysburg campaign, Coddington does a very detailed study of Lee's and Hooker's movements from the beginning--June 2 when Lee started to withdraw his army from Fredericksburg. Most books summarize this aspect but Coddington is pretty thorough.[return][return]Most importantly, the books is what it set out to be--a study in command. Some major figures come to life: Buford, Reynolds, Longstreet and in particular, Meade.[return][return]Meade has always had a bad press. Coddington, who clearly favors Meade, makes convincing arguments that it was undeserved--that Meade was an excellent commander who has been wrongfully blamed for Lee's escape after Gettysburg.[return][return]Most Civil War accounts of Gettysburg focus on the obviously dramatic; this has been especially true of the film "Gettysburg". Everybody "knows" about Little Round top and especially Pickett's Charge. More now undoubtedly have an idea of Buford's stand west of Gettysburg until the arrival of Reynolds and the First Corps.[return][return]What Coddington does is go into the 2nd day battle for Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill, for example. I had no idea of the seriousness of that particular engagement until I read Coddington. Most books treat it sort of as an afterthought, which it most certainly wasn't.[return][return]Unlike most books on the Civil War, the maps are almost adequate. I particularly dislike maps that have these little dots, dashes and otherwise near-identical symbols showing routes of armies, and several of the maps are so cursed. However, their usefulness is immensely enhance by being so detailed that one can follow, through the text, the actaul course of the armies. I scan maps and reproduce them in order to be able to refer to them easily while reading the text. Coddington's maps of upper VA, MD, and southern PA are excellent--detailed locations of towns, gaps, rivers, runs, etc.[return][return]Another joy of Coddington's maps, those of the actual battle. To my delight, the three critical ones are topographical maps, that actually show the layout of the land especially at the Round Tops. One, however, is maddening in that the text talks about the movements of some units that simply are not listed on the map or may be subsumed under a particular command. When I reread this book, I intend to go over carefully the Order of Battle and see if that indeed is the case.[return][return]Coddington has the complete Order of Battle for both armies, which I found indispensible.[return][return]Finally, the chapter notes are excellent. I'm one of those who reads them until they interfere too much in the narrative. But they are well worth reading, since many times they include information as to why Coddington has come down on one side of speculation about movements, for example, rather than another. The tidbit about he and his friend reconnoitering Wolf's Hill is one such example.[return][return]One of the best books I have ever read....more